A Study Of Translating "Shi" Sentence Into English As Exemplified By The2013Report On The Work Of The Government

The thesis studies the English translation principles and methods of "Shi" Sentence in Chinese as exemplified by the2013Report on the Work of the Government (hereinafter shorted as the Report) from the perspective of the differences between Chinese and English in language, culture and philosophy as well as Peter Newmark’s translation concepts of semantic translation and communicative translation."Shi" Sentence is defined as a sentence containing the word "Shi" which serves as the predicate or part of the predicate of a sentence. According to the syntactic structure of the sentence, it is classified into four types:1)"noun+’Shi’+noun" sentence;2)"noun+’Shi’+non-noun" sentence;3)"non-noun+’Shi’+noun" sentence; and4)"non-noun+’Shi’+non-noun" sentence. In the2013Report, there are forty-six "Shi" Sentences in total. Twenty-three of them belong to the main type-the "noun+’Shi’+non-noun" sentence. The translation methods of this type are mainly literal translation, modification and omission, and specification is occasionally taken as well. Thirteen sentences belong to the first type of sentence. Literal translation is the principally applied method, and modification and omission are also adopted in the rendition of this type. The third and the last types of "Shi" Sentences take a small part, counting four and six respectively. The methods of literal translation and omission are mainly employed in rendering these two types of sentences.The study results show that the main factors affecting the translation of "Shi" Sentence are the language differences; that is, Chinese attaches importance to parataxis and English, hypotaxis; Chinese is topic prominent and English, subject prominent. The English translation methods of "Shi" Sentence go as follows:literal translation, modification, omission and specification. Literal translation is the main method adopted. In other words, the approaches of semantic translation and communicative translation are both used, and in most cases, the two approaches are combined in the translation of "Shi" Sentence.